“Indeed?”
“You went to it, opened it, then closed it and left. You didn’t take anything out. I wonder if you put something in.”
Sellers took a magnifying glass from his drawer, went over the music box carefully, inspecting both the works and the case, looking for some place of concealment which might harbour some bit of planted evidence: When he could find none, he dosed the music box, studied the outside of it, and looked at the portrait of the young woman. “I wonder if this is it.”
“What?”
“The portrait. It isn’t a missing heiress, is it?”
Bertha, feeling remarkably good after winning her verbal encounter with the matron settled back in her chair and laughed.
“Why the laughter?”
“Thinking of the nineteenth-century beauty,” Bertha said. “A chunky, mealy-mouthed nincompoop who wore corsets and fainted at the faintest suggestion of salty humour. And you think I’d come all the way from—”
“Yes, yes,” Sergeant Sellers said as Bertha stopped. “You interest me now. All the way from where, Mrs. Cool?”
Bertha clamped her lips tightly shut.